“Suzu Kanade, The King of Ayakashi”
Creative Staff
Story: Kentaro Yabuki
Art: Kentaro Yabuki
Translation: Satsuki Yamashita
Lettering: Mark McMurray
What They Say:
Japan may be brimming with mysterious monsters called ayakashi, but they have a special exorcist ninja force to counter the threat! Young exorcist ninja Matsuri spends his days fighting ayakashi to protect his childhood friend Suzu. But when an ayakashi cat named Shirogane shows up, things get turned upside down! Legendary mangaka Kentaro Yabuki returns to Shonen Jump with this new fantasy series full of ayakashi and romance!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The chapter begins with a naked Suzu giving Shirogane a bath. Oh my! Is she also washing Matsuri? Nah. I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded though. Matsuri and his grandfather are pondering if Suzu can become the King of Ayakashi. It’s probably going to be difficult, right? About that…it seems that the ayakashi have already accepted Suzu as their king. Okay, that was easy! And fast, too. It turns out that Garaku gathered all of the ayakashi to celebrate their new king. Sneaky, sneaky. He didn’t want the ayakashi to be without a king for too long. They need a leader to help resolve their conflicts. If the Ayakashi Medium is willing to step up, then the ayakashi are willing to accept her.
Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s one ayakashi who’s not fond of the idea Suzu being their leader. Tanumaro doesn’t believe that a human can fill the role of king. That’s fair. On a side note, Tanumaro is a teapot panda ayakashi. Freaking adorable. Suzu actually knows about Tanumaro. She hasn’t seen him in a while though. Anyway, Tanumaro looked up to Shirogane when he was the leader. Sure, he may have been bossy, nagged all the time, and shed too much. But he sure was really strong! I’m not sure if he was complimenting Shirogane or making fun of him, haha. Matsuri says that he shouldn’t worry about Suzu. He’ll be supporting her. Tanumaro doesn’t accept that. After all, it was Matsuri who told him that ayakashi and humans can’t coexist! Ah, there’s where all the resentment is coming from.
Tanumaro proceeds to trap Matsuri in his steamy visions jutsu. Care to guess what the jutsu does? As the name suggests, it shows steamy visions to those it captures and closes them off from the outside world. Also, only ayakashi can interfere with the barrier. Humans can’t do anything about it. That’s unfortunate. By the way, what vision is Matsuri seeing? He’s naked and being intensely washed by Suzu. Yup, that’s definitely steamy! Suzu remarks that Matsuri has grown stronger since they were kids. He could easily break Tanumaro’s barrier with his wind jutsu any time he wants. He hasn’t because he wants to repair the friendship he once had with him. Matsuri knows he was wrong for distrusting all ayakashi. His words move Tanumaro. He forgives him! Sadly, he doesn’t know how to release his jutsu. That’s not good. What now? Suzu uses her cloning ayakashi omokage technique and creates a clone of herself. The clone isn’t human and is able to enter the barrier. She tells Matsuri that he’s been forgiven and he immediately breaks free. All’s well that ends well I suppose.
In Summary:
I didn’t think it would happen so soon but it looks like Suzu is the King of Ayakashi! Let’s hope that she can change things for the better between humans and ayakashi. Speaking of which, Matsuri and Tanumaro becoming friends again was certainly a small step in the right direction. Tanumaro was one of the nice ayakashi that used to play with Suzu and Matsuri as kids. And then Matsuri started keeping all ayakashi away from Suzu for her protection. He knows now that he was wrong to distrust all ayakashi. They aren’t all bad. I liked seeing him admit that in this chapter. Repairing the relationship between humans and ayakashi isn’t going to be easy. It all starts with baby steps though. We just have to sit back and see how things go. And lastly, for all of you ecchi fans out there, I know you’ll definitely love this chapter. It featured the lewdest couple of pages from the manga so far. Let’s just say that Suzu was giving Matsuri a really, really good scrub.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Age Rating: T
Released By: Shonen Jump/VIZ Media
Released Date: November 29th, 2020
